A Message from the Residency Program Director

It is my great pleasure to introduce our exciting and dynamic residency training program.

Our People

Our people are the keystone of our Department and our training program. Our chairman, faculty, residents, fellows, and our administrative staff are dedicated to providing the highest quality residency training program possible. Our faculty members have invested countless hours in the development and delivery of a well planned curriculum. We pride ourselves on having an accessible, flexible and innovative approach to medical education. The residency program is small enough to individualize each resident's experience while being large enough to offer a full range of anesthesia experiences. We are proud to have achieved full accreditation status with our recent Royal College review.

We have a fantastic group of residents, including 7 International Medical Graduates, 1 Foreign Medical Graduate, 3 residents from the Canadian Forces and 2 Family Medicine Anesthesia trainees. Many residents have taken on leadership roles within our department, make important contributions to several committees and also participate in the CARMS interview process.

Clinical Sites

Our residents rotate through 5 major teaching sites. The Ottawa Hospital, Civic Campus is the base site for all trauma, neurosurgery, high risk obstetrics, bariatric surgery and vascular surgery. The General Campus is the base site for all major cancer surgery, high risk Obstetrics, renal transplant and Thoracic Surgery. The Riverside Campus is our Ambulatory centre. The Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO) and the University of Ottawa Heart Institute allow for comprehensive training in Pediatric and Cardiac anesthesia, respectively. In addition, there are opportunities in community anesthesia rotations at other hospitals in Ottawa such as the Queensway Carlton Hospital and the Ottawa area's only Francophone centre, Hôpital Montfort.

University of Ottawa - AnesthesiologyResidencyProgram

Competency by Design Curriculum

As of July 1, 2015, our program introduced the first Anesthesia CBD curriculum in Canada for all starting PGY-1s. The first cohort of CBD residents are currently in their third year of training!

The basic principle of this innovative curriculum is to focus on achieving specific competencies of clinical practices. The CBD program is structured according to the Royal College template for all specialties and includes four stages: transition to discipline, foundations, core and transition to practice. Our CBD curriculum is led by our Associate Program Director, Dr Daniel Dubois.

Simulation

A major strength of our program is a well developed simulation curriculum. Our University of Ottawa Skills and Simulation centre has its roots with one of our Departments founders, Professor Emeritus, former Chair, and Officer of the Order of Canada recipient Dr J. Earl Wynands. We have several dedicated and experienced faculty, led by our Simulation Director, Dr Michelle Chiu.

Residents get exposure to high fidelity simulations during multiple stages of their training with the aim of honing their Crisis Resource Management skills, and developing their ability to manage common and rare emergencies. Simulation scenarios are carefully mapped to the overall curriculum. Additionally there are obstetrical team sessions as well as opportunity to participate in a number of education research sessions as study subjects. The Royal College has implemented an initiative called Canadian National Anesthesia Simulation Curriculum (CanNASC) which adds simulation scenarios as part of a formative evaluation.

Balance of Clinical Exposure and Academic Time

Throughout the training program, we strive to balance adequate clinical exposure with our academic curriculum. For example, during the early stages of training such as the bootcamp where residents attend several didactic and simulation based events we still have scheduled clinical exposures to ensure adequate orientation to the hospital. During the middle and later stages, residents have protected academic half days to provide the opportunity to work on academic pursuits and/or to study.

Feedback for Residents

We are committed to providing our residents with feedback in an honest, constructive, and respectful manner. The resident coordinator at each site conducts regular face to face interviews with every resident at the conclusion of each stage and module, and residents meet individually with the Program Director twice annually. We are in the process of initiating a new faculty development program to assist our faculty in maintaining high quality feedback for residents regarding their performance.

Scholarship Opportunities

All residents are expected to engage in scholarly work and present a minimum of one research poster at our annual Gary Johnson Research Day in May. Our hope is to support residents in achieving the goal of presenting at a national meeting and/or achieving a publication. Recently, several of our residents have been awarded CAS research grants and presented at national conferences. We have several successful clinical researchers in our Department who have been awarded prestigious research grants and awards. We are thrilled to have a strong connection with DIME. We are partnered with a PhD medical education scientist, Dr Meghan McConnell. Several exciting scholarship projects in medical education are in the works at this time. Our Department is thoroughly committed to supporting scholarly activity and welcome interest and motivation from residents.

Mentoring Program

With a Program as large as we are, we haven’t lost our "small town feel". We get to know each other not only as faculty to residents, but also as colleagues. To that end, we have a mentorship group led by Dr Sarika Alisic where every resident is paired up with a faculty member. The mentor group meets formally twice per year. Over the year, mentors and mentees are encouraged to meet informally for small group and individual evenings.

Please explore the rest of our website for further details on the organization of our curriculum and specific training modules. Thank you for your interest in our program. Please contact us if you have any questions.